I’m laying in a puffy bed under a ceiling fan. I’m thinking about the PCT and smiling. It took me a few days to process and re-integrate, but I’m feeling pretty good. No, I’m not pregnant. Although when I read that comment, I thought, “man, that would have been a way better excuse for quitting”. [...]

I know. I know.
I owe an update. A full and gory recounting of our highest highs and lowest lows. I’m almost ready. Really. I’m still so enamored by all the soft and level surfaces, it’s hard to tear myself out of beds and chairs to get anything done.
Baby steps.
-Cindy

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Cindy is still formulating her post on her last days of the trail.
Stay tuned!

This is a hard post to write, so I’ll just say it fast like taking off a bandaid. We called it quits.
The second day after leaving Independence, Cindy was having a really hard time, and we hiked a pretty short day. The next day, she was feeling very low energy. We hung [...]

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The hitch wasn’t as hard as we thought. We’re off into the wild. We won’t have cell but will continue to update via sat phone. It’s not on our itinerary, but our next stop will be Mammoth Lakes.  
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We finally saw our first bears on the PCT and it was a great experience. Just south of Lower Vidette Meadow I looked up and a black bear was looking right back at me about 30 feet away. I froze and he looked at us for a few seconds and then went back [...]

Cindigo glissades down a chute on the north side of Forrester Pass. Great Success! -Andy
*I just uploaded about 70 new photos! you can see them here. If you go to the page and click “slideshow” you can view the pics in order from the time we started out on the trail. -Cindy

Okay, We’ve made it 800 miles. By now we have a pretty good idea of what’s working and what isn’t, so here’s a gear review for anyone that might be interested. All ratings are out of a possible 10 stars.
Clothing, from the feet up:
Shoes:
GoLite Storm Dragons. 4/10.
Cindy feels that these shoes put [...]

We’re waiting for the bus to take us back to Independence so we can pick up our mail drop. Andy got some nice new trail running shoes, we bought cheap sunglasses and just came from lunch where I quite possibly consumed two sticks of butter with three pieces of bread. We optimistically thought we would [...]

I’m sending this message from the back of a pick up truck on the way to Bishop. The post office won’t be open until Monday so we’re taking the time to go to a bigger town to get Andy new shoes. We have some great pics and video to upload. We saw our first bears [...]

So, Southern California is behind us. No more water caches and scorpions. No more lugging six liters of water up exposed desert mountains. Now we get 5-digit elevations, snow, and twenty-something degree temperatures. It seems like a good time for a review of our gear, our experience, and the trail in [...]

Andy has arrived from the wild! We slept soundly in the “pink flamingo” trailer. This morning, we’re waiting in the silver airstream internet trailer surfing the internets waiting for it to be 8:30 when breakfast opens at the general store/grill.  There’s a huge debate as to what to do about the upcoming inclement weather. Some hikers are going [...]

I thought I was going to be cowboy camping all by my lonesome here in Kennedy Meadows, but the opposite is true.  I just finished sharing a bottle of wine with Songbird, telling Drifter stories and have nearly finished up the evening by sitting around the campfire. Shortly, I will retire to my trailer with [...]

Ostrich love
Originally uploaded by cindigodotcom
While Andy has been slogging away on the trail I’ve been doing many fun things. One of them was going to a ostrich farm with trail manager Nova. She drove all the way from San Diego to see me. I missed that crazy girl. She’s transporting me to Kennedy Meadows tonight [...]

We’ve been hiking a lot with Big John since Hiker Heaven in Agua Dulce. He’s a great guy who also happens to have designed one of the most unique and cool backpacks I’ve seen, the Moonbow.  Check it out at www.moonbowgear.com if you get a chance.  
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My first attempt at hitching without my secret weapon Cindigo went remarkably well. I stepped off of the trail at Walker Pass and in about 5 seaconds an amazing guy named Rocky pulled over.  Rocky has hiked the John Muir something like six times and had lots of great stories to tell. He dropped me [...]

This is the most aggresive horny toad I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them!  It’s hard to tell from the picture, but he was actually lunging at the camera.  
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This was a pretty brutal climb at the end of a day, but it’ a nice view.  
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